Rue Catinat

This is a working river. Hour after hour the radio-telephone is cackling on the tugs. "Calling Sun 17, take the Florian and go in with her. Calling Sun 16, has that little Spaniard moved yet? What's the matter with her?". Language, old river hands complain, has become politer on the river. Education, they say, is the curse of everything, and the bad-language joke ... has lost its anchorage.

[V.S. Pritchett, London Perceived, Penguin Books, 78]